I haven’t commented on the British royal wedding, because I do not give a damn about a pack of foreign inbreds, and even going to the effort of saying so is paying them more attention than they deserve. But I do have to comment on this: the British royal family have banned satirical coverage by Australian comedy team The Chaser:

Just two days before Prince William and Kate Middleton are due to tie the knot, ABC TV has been forced to cancel The Chaser’s one-off live coverage of the event due to what it says are restrictions imposed by the royal family.

The Chaser’s Royal Wedding Commentary was due to air on ABC2 from 7:00pm AEST on Friday, offering viewers a satirical take on the royal wedding.

But now the live special – promised to be “uninformed and unconstitutional” – has been reluctantly pulled due to restrictions imposed over the Easter break.

Firstly, there’s the obvious point: if you don’t want your wedding laughed at, hold it in private. If you make a big public spectacle of it, then you have only yourself to blame when people point out the inherent absurdity of the whole exercise. Secondly, the Chaser’s Julian Morrow puts it well when they say

“For a monarchy to be issuing decrees about how the media should cover them seems quite out of keeping with modern democratic times… but I suppose that’s exactly what the monarchy is,” he said.

About the only virtue the British royals can claim is that they’re harmless – they don’t actually do anything. They’ve just blown that out of the water, and revealed that under the skin, they’re just a censoring hereditary dictatorship with no sense of humour, just like they were in the C18th. And if that’s the case, if they’re actually going to behave like monarchs, then its high time we freed ourselves from them and declared a republic.

New South Wales Premier Kristina Keneally has a problem. Her government is involved in a dubious and controversial plan to privatise the state’s electricity assets. But opposition legislators, who control the state’s upper house, are not impressed with the idea of selling key state assets for half of what they are worth (and then throwing in A$2.3 billion of “inducements” into the bargain). So they’ve launched a select committee inquiry into the deal, which could result in criticism of the government.

Keneally has responded by proroguing Parliament, effectively killing off the inquiry by suspending all select committee business until the state elections next year.

As with the proroguings in Canada in 2008 and the Cook Islands and Papua New Guinea this year, this is an affront to democracy. Unlike the previous cases, there’s no real question of Keneally’s democratic mandate to rule – she still has a majority where it counts, in the lower house. But in some ways, that makes it worse: New South Wales democracy is being overturned, not to ensure the survival of a government, but simply to prevent ordinary, everyday criticism. Which makes you wonder what she would do if her majority was under threat…

This is a fundamental flaw in the Westminster system, but we know how to solve it. In the seventeenth century, the English Parliament responded to a monarch who suspended and dissolved them for his political convenience by deciding for themselves when they would meet, effectively repealing the power of prorogation (and, in their case, of dissolution – not a democratic move). The New Zealand Parliament has effectively done the same, setting its sitting calendar by motion. While the power to prorogue technically remains, our Parliament is now in practice an independent entity, rather than one which exists and meets at the whim of the monarch or the Prime Minister. New South Wales (and Canada, the Cook Islands and PNG) should follow our example.

• Support on “confidence and supply”, the regular votes which make a government a government in the Westminster system (which Australia and New Zealand share).
  
• A general agreement on direction and key policies, along with a few trophy policies for minor parties to wave at their supporters;
  
• An agreement to consult on all matters of policy (a necessity if the government is to get the numbers to pass legislation); and
  
• Ministerial positions outside cabinet for support party leaders.
  

Note what’s missing here: an agreement to support every piece of government initiated legislation. This is because we have realised that trying to force parties to support policies they fundamentally disagree with results in them splintering under the pressure. So we have the somewhat odd – to outsiders – practice of parties which support the government, and whose leaders are Ministers, voting against government legislation (e.g. the Maori Party opposing National’s employment law changes, the ACT Party opposing the Emissions Trading Scheme). This doesn’t mean the government loses votes – under the current arrangement, a National / ACT / Maori Party ménage à trois, National can gain a majority with either one of its partners, so it simply alternates as necessary, using ACT to pass more right-leaning legislation and the Maori Party to pass other stuff. But the key point is that it does not put up legislation unless it is assured beforehand it has the numbers to pass it. And that’s what the consultation process is all about – running ideas past the other parties, asking “will you support this? What would we have to change?” While the other parties could play hardarse and demand something in return for every vote, or threaten to pull the plug if they don’t get their own way, they don’t. The reason for this is that they all understand that a coalition is an ongoing relationship, and that they need to get along or else they’ll be punished by the electorate. And in hindsight, that was Winston Peters’ big problem: as an FPP politician, who had never known anything else, he saw coalition as a single-round game rather than an ongoing one. Though to his credit he eventually learned the ropes, and by 2002 was playing the game just like everybody else.

Will it turn out like this in Australia? I really don’t know. We’ve learned over 15 years how to make coalitions work for both parties. Australia is being thrown in at the deep end, with politicians who are not used to it, and with numbers that leave no alternative partners and so make every vote crucial – a situation likely to encourage bad behaviour. OTOH, Australian politicians can look across the Tasman, and try and construct their coalition arrangements with the benefit of the New Zealand experience. They don’t need to learn the lessons of coalition politics the hard way – we have already learned them for you.

Interim Australian election results, from the AEC (seat numbers from here):

While this is a preliminary result, with 4 seats still in doubt, it shows the fundamental unfairness of the Australian election system. The Greens, with 11.43% of the vote, got a single seat. Meanwhile, the Nationals, with 3.86% of the vote, got 7, while the Queensland LNP, with 8.95% of the vote, got 21. Describing this outcome as anything other than perverse, is, well, perverse.

An electoral system which distributes power in a way which bears no apparent relationship to the total vote cast is not just unfair and irrational, it is undemocratic. Australians deserve better than this – they deserve a properly democratic system. They deserve proportional representation.

Australia provides $414.3 million a year in aid to PNG. About $30 million of this ($150 million over five years) goes on the law and justice sector program, which funds prisons, courts, and the police. While half of that money goes on consultants, the core fact remains: Australia is funding the PNG police, an agency which engages in widespread and systematic torture. You are paying for the truncheons, rifles, axes and machetes used to commit these crimes.

Australia should not be doing this. Instead, it should make law enforcement funding conditional on human rights. And as long as the PNG police force engages in torture, that force should not receive a single cent of Australian money, unless it is directed towards stopping torture and bringing those responsible for it to justice.

Iceland’s revenge has been smothering Europe for almost a week now, and the airline industry is reportedly losing $280 million a day. Naturally, they’re keen to stop losing money, so today saw some carefully staged test flights, followed by stock declarations that the planes were not damaged and everything was fine. The message is clear: the Eurpean airline industry wants to be rid of “silly” flight restrictions.

But this is a real problem – take a look at these photos of what the ash did to the innards of a Finnish airforce jet’s engines. If they start flying again, the risks of an accident will significantly increase. The airlines don’t care about that, because they’re insured – insured for the cost of replacing the plane, and insured for the cost of compensating the relatives of dead passengers. And so they’re willing to gamble with their passenger’s lives in order to avoid going out of business.

Preventing this sort of corporate sociopathy is exactly why we have government.

The above, which translates as “not twice for the same”, is one of the fundamental principles of modern law. Once you’ve been tried for something, and that trial has reached a final verdict (either to convict or acquit), you can’t be tried for it again. And if convicted and sentenced, you can’t then have additional punishments heaped on you for the same offence.

The government of New South Wales has just announced its intention to abandon that principle, with plans to subject violent criminals to indefinite detention when their sentences are complete. So, despite being handed a finite sentence by judges, these prisoners will now be given an effective life sentence by political fiat.

This unquestionably violates the rights against retroactive penalties, double jeopardy, and arbitrary detention affirmed in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (and as a party to the ICCPR and First Optional Protocol, Australia will no doubt become the subject of complaints to the UN Human Rights Committee as a result) . But it also violates the rule of law. It arbitrarily changes the rules after the fact, with retroactive effects. The result is not only arbitrary decisions – criminal sentences determined by the whether a politician can gain votes by squicking someone rather than the severity of the offence – but also that no one can rely on the law as a guide to their behaviour. When sentences are arbitrary, there is no deterrence. And when they are arbitrarily large, there is no incentive to accept them (which could be unpleasant for witnesses, or those tasked with enforcement. Sadly, such injustices never seem to come back on the politicians…)

This is simply a monstrous move, but Australia has no formal human rights mechanisms which would prevent it (New Zealand has the BORA, which would at least force the politicians to admit what they were doing – not that that seems to help). And so it gets chalked up as yet another example of why Australia needs a Bill of Rights…

Australia has some of the worst racial disparities in the developed world. The average household income of indigenous Australians is only 60% of the average. The proportion with high-school or higher educations is only half that of the average (a fifth for university qualifications), while their unemployment rate is triple that of non-indigenous Australians. Their health statistics are equally appalling, with complication and disease rates at least double the average, with a consequent effect on life expectancy. The average indigenous Australian dies a decade earlier as a result of poverty, disease, poor access to health services and institutionalised racism.

The Australian Federal Government spends billions trying to correct these disparities, with apparently little effect. But that’s because most of the money never actually reaches its target, instead being diverted to buy votes in marginal seats:

THE Northern Territory Labor government has for the past five years diverted $2 billion earmarked for indigenous disadvantage and other key services to mainstream spending in marginal Darwin seats.

Detailed figures obtained by The Weekend Australian reveal that hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars provided by the commonwealth and intended for indigenous health, homelessness, delivery of services and families have been used to service debt and bolster superannuation payments.

The figures come as the Territory government continues to defend its handling of the $672 million Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Project, which has so far failed to result in one new house being built, despite $45m being spent in the first 15 months of the project.

This is not a new story; the National Indigenous Times highlighted it back in 2006, the Sydney Morning Herald in 2005. But still it goes on – and indigenous Australians suffer as a result.

It is time to end this organised racist theft, and for state governments to spend the money they are allocated for indigenous peoples for its proper purpose, rather than misappropriating it. But that would require Australians to accept that indigenous people matter, that they are human beings equally deserving of government attention. And looking across the Tasman, even after Rudd’s historic apology, that acceptance is still a long way away.

The ACT Legislative Assembly has just passed a civil union law, amending its existing civil partnerships legislation to permit public ceremonies. There’s some history here – in 2006 and 2007 civil union laws were repeatedly vetoed by the Howard Government on the basis that allowing public ceremonies (rather than filling out a form and making a declaration in a registry office) would “mimic marriage”. The message was clear: gay couples should stay in the legislative closet, and keep out of sight (and out of mind) of decent straight folk.

The new law gives the finger to that idea, reinstating public ceremonies and establishing a seperate system of civil partnership notaries. Oddly, however, the ceremonies are limited solely to same-sex couples – ensuring same- and opposite-sex couples use different laws apparently being a cornerstone of Australian bigot politics. Even this may not be enough to avoid a federal veto – the Australian Labour Party voted just three months ago to uphold Howard’s ban on gay marriage, and Kevin Rudd personally opposes equality. its unclear yet whether there will be a veto – but given the hostility of the ALP to gay rights, I would not be surprised.

In the run-up to the 2007 election, then-Australian Prime Minister John Howard decided to repeat his successful racial wedge tactics with Aborigines as the victims, declaring a “state of emergency” in Northern Australia, taking over townships, and suspending anti-discrimination laws so it could subject aborigines to authoritarian and paternalist controls on the basis of race. Now, James Anaya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of indigenous people, has pointed out the obvious: that this was fundamentally discriminatory. And he didn’t mince his words in saying so:

“There is entrenched racism in Australia,” Anaya told reporters in the capital, Canberra, after visiting several Aboriginal townships in the past week. “These measures overtly discriminate against Aboriginal peoples, infringe their right of self determination and stigmatize already stigmatized communities.”

The Australian has more:

Compulsory income management and blanket bans on alcohol and pornography were “overtly discriminatory” and further stigmatised already stigmatised communities, he said.

“People who have a demonstrated capacity to manage their income are included.

“It’s inappropriate to their circumstances but is also, as expressed by them, demeaning.”

The indigenous rights expert was also scathing of federal Labor’s insistence that housing funds would only flow if indigenous communities signed over their land.

“It’s a mistake to assume that indigenous peoples … aren’t capable of taking care of their homes,” Prof Anaya said.

“Indigenous control can be appropriate to indigenous peoples’ development, to their aspirations, to indeed being in control of their lives like all others.”

As for compensation for indigenous people taken from their families by government agencies, the UN rapporteur was unequivocal: “There should be reparations,” he said.

That’s a pretty stunning condemnation of a government we all expect to behave better. It will be interesting to see how the Rudd government, which has moved a long way from Howard’s position, responds.